The most present trouble of this summer was the sickness
of Simeona. The account of him on Ash Wednesday
is: ’He is dying of consumption slowly,
and may go back with us two months hence, but I doubt
it. Poor fellow, he makes the worst of his case,
and is often discontented and thinks himself aggrieved
because we cannot derange the whole plan of the school
economy for him. I have everything which is
good for him, every little dainty, and everyone is
most kind; but when it comes to a complaint because
one pupil-teacher is not set apart to sit with him
all day, and another to catch him fish, of course
I tell him that it would be wrong to grant what is
so unreasonable. Some one or other of the most
stupid of the boys catches his fish just as well as
a pupil-teacher, and he is quite able to sit up and
read for two or three hours a day, and would only
be injured by having another lad in the room on purpose
to be the receptacle of all his moans and complaints,
yet I know, poor fellow! it is much owing to the disease
upon him.’

In spite of his fretfulness and exactions, the young
man, meeting not with spoiling, but with true kindness,
responded to the touch. Lady Martin tells us:
’I shall never forget dear Mr. Patteson’s
thankfulness when, after a long season of reserve,
he opened his heart to him, and told him how, step
by step, this sinfulness of sin had been brought home
to him. He knew he had done wrong in his heathen
boyhood, but had put away such deeds when he was baptized,
and had almost forgotten the past, or looked on it
as part of heathenism. But in his illness, tended
daily and hourly by our dear friend, his conscience
had become very tender. He died in great peace.’

His death is mentioned in the following letter to
Sir John Coleridge:—­

’March 26, 1860. ’(This day 5 years I left home. It was a Black
Monday indeed.)

’My dear Uncle,—­At three this morning
died one of my old scholars, by name George Selwyn
Simeona, from Nengone. He was here for his third
time; for two years a regular communicant, having received
a good deal of teaching before I knew him. He
was baptized three years ago. I did not wish
to bring him this time, for it was evident that he
could not live long when we met last at Nengone, and
I told him that he had better not come with us; but
he said, “Heaven was no farther from New Zealand
than from Nengone;” and when we had pulled some
little way from shore, he ran down the beach, and made
us return to take him in. Gradual decline and
chronic bronchitis wore him to a skeleton. On
Thursday the Bishop and I administered the Holy Eucharist
to him; and he died at 3 A.M. to-day, with his hand
in mine, as I was in the act of commending his soul
to God. His wife, a sweet good girl, one of
Mrs. Selwyn’s pupils from Nengone in old times,
died last year. They leave one boy of three years,
whom I hope to get hold of entirely, and as it were
adopt him.